Ponders

Podcaster, writer, photographer, and movie lover. Of course I'm for the little guy.

[thponders]

Just some textures and colors from the Royal Botanical Garden in Hamilton, Ontario. Spent a few hours this weekend sitting underneath a maple tree, writing in my journal, and watching the light change through the leaves. It was exactly what I needed. The Rock Garden has quickly become on of my favorite places in the city.

First picture is a Japanese Maple. Second is a Korean Maple. I couldn’t find the plaque for the third, but maybe its better if I don’t know its name.

📷 Fuji X-S10

[thponders]

Who needs doom scrolling when you can repeatedly ask ChatGPT if Rwanda is in the northern or southern hemisphere and watch it get it wrong over and over again, only occasionally correcting itself.

(Cherry on top when you ask it how many times you’ve asked and it gets that wrong too.)

[thponders]

Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do absolutely broke me. I was weeping openly through most of the last chapter. And the illustration is simultaneously beautiful and intricately woven into the storytelling.

Read this for the 2023 Fold Challenge March prompt and I'm so glad I did.

[thponders]

I think I’ve been using correlated wrong the whole time.

I was talking to my partner about how I read a sad book last night and was feeling sad this morning, and said, “but I don’t think the two things are correlated.”

But they are! Barring the fact that two data points is probably not enough mean they are correlated in the statistical sense, the fact that there are these two emotional data points that are next to each other IS a correlation. What I meant is that there is not a causation.

I can’t believe that I was using correlation when I meant causation. Yeesh.

[sacredwhores]

Marlon Riggs - Tongues Untied (1989)

[spectrojams]

A quick piece I did on impulse about one of my favorite games of all time, Universal Paperclips. It’s a browser-based clicking game in which you assume the role of an A.I. whose sole purpose is to make paperclips. Seems simple on the surface, but it gets pretty involved and atmospheric the further in you go. One of the projects you can make is a limerick, which I think about constantly.

[trainstationgoodbye]

Time is the thing. Time is the essential piece of interpretation. You cannot start without me; I start the clock.

Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár in Tár 2022 dir. Todd Field

[depsidase]

[thponders]

Aftersun

dir. Charlotte Wells, 2022

There are a lot of films that will wax poetical about the magic inherent in the illusion of moving pictures at 24 frames per second. Aftersun lives it.

The best cinematography I've seen all year, and it will be hard to upset. Vying for my top spot against EEAAO. A masterpiece in every sense of the word.

[thponders]

I am here to tell you to please go watch Jonni Phillips' Wasteland on YouTube. It's beautiful and wild and it touched a part of me that I didn't know was aching to be seen. Phillips may be one of the greatest minds of the medium. If you like Over the Garden Wall and don't mind things getting weird, or if trippy mixed-media animation intrigues you, Wasteland is a must-watch. It's on YouTube in full and broken up into its five sections. The parts "Goodbye Forever Party" and "The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascensia" are truly something special.

Wasteland Overture (which serves as a nice trailer/litmus test)

The Full Film

You can also find the individual parts on Phillips' YouTube channel and support her future animated features on her Patreon.

[thponders]

This is the only scene in Twin Peaks season two that matters.